Voluntary Services Manager
Addenbrookes Hospital

Suzanne R

00:00:03 Suzanne R, Voluntary Services Manager. Basically I talk about all the volunteering opportunities to the public, so I’m promoting volunteering within Addenbrookes. So I run information sessions for anyone that’s interested in volunteering, also sort of the managing of the volunteers, and also supporting them through their placements.

00:00:23 I don’t have to do that much promotion of volunteering here because we’re fortunate to have lots and lots of people that want to volunteer here. And it’s amazing how many people have volunteered for years and years and have made such a huge difference to people, so it makes me sort of feel quite proud to be involve in that really.

00:00:40 The volunteers do lots of different roles in the hospital, so that we have volunteers that bring their own dog in to the hospital to actually go and visit patients. Volunteers also provide services such as library and newspaper services. Then we have volunteers that are just working in the wards to chat to patients, ask if there’s anything that they need.

00:01:02 I definitely am inspired by the people that come and volunteer. And hearing people’s stories and motivations for volunteering is really inspiring, that even people that work full time, live miles and miles away, actually want to come once a week and volunteer here and it’s quite amazing. Especially the people that have been volunteering here – there’s a man who has volunteered here for thirty-five years, and still really loves it and wants to continue.

00:01:27 The things that motivate me are having something that is quite varied, with my role I never know who I might meet, what they might be sort of doing, and what will happen sort of day to day, so I have lots of sort of different emails or phone calls coming through. So I like the sort of varied aspect of the role, and everyone always has a different story and it’s really nice to sort of feel part of that and actually help them with their volunteering.

00:01:51 I think the sort of difficulty that I had through from sort of sixteen up to where I am now is really knowing what I wanted to do. There’s probably things like when I was younger like I wanted to be a singer or something like that, but – because I liked kind of acting out musicals and things like that. And Joseph was one of them. (LAUGHS) Yes I used to act them out with my sister. Yes now I kind of keep the singing to a minimum.

00:02:17 I toyed with lots of different ideas of what I was looking at was sort of journalism, or publishing. I felt that I wanted to do something that perhaps I felt I was doing something a bit more rewarding or helping people. Then I did an internship at Cancer Research UK. And I really enjoyed the sort of people I worked with, and the environment and sort of helping people, and I was working in that area, really enjoyed volunteering and saw the job at Addenbrookes.

00:02:44 I suppose the thing that probably sticks out in my mind as sort of a proudest moment is probably actually getting this job. After going for lots of other jobs and perhaps not getting them because I didn’t have enough experience sort of previously to that, it was nice to actually sort of get that opportunity and I felt sort of proud to sort of get that.

00:03:04 I don’t have any sort of future career aspirations other than just to sort of make this job a success for volunteers really and just to sort of – I would like to sort of stay in the NHS because I think it’s sort of a nice area to work in. It’s always busy, there’s always lots of stuff going on, and it’s sort of quite an interesting place to work.

00:03:25 The lessons that I’ve probably learned through my sort of different processes that I’ve been through, is probably that just sort of never give up really, and to sort of keep trying, remain sort of positive really. Even when you do get rejections from different interviews or you know jobs that you really want or you know things like that. If you just keep persevering then you know that you will sort of get somewhere in the end.

00:03:47 ENDS